Woman sentenced to probation for hostage situation in St. Paul in 2022
Kanisha Wiggins Credit: Ramsey County Jail
A 33-year-old woman was sentenced to five years of probation in connection with a hostage situation and standoff at a St. Paul gas station in 2022.
In addition to her probation, Kanisha Deon Wiggins is prohibited from contacting any of the four victims and must stay away from the Speedway where the standoff occurred. She must also pay $5,630.13 in restitution to one of the victims, a court official said.
Wiggins had originally been charged with four counts of kidnapping. In April, she pleaded guilty to two of the counts in exchange for the other two to be dismissed, court records show.
As previously reported, St. Paul police responded to the Speedway on Johnson Parkway in March of 2022 on a report of a hostage situation.
When officers arrived, they saw Wiggins — a former employee of the store — holding a pistol in the common area of the store. A criminal complaint states officers noted she looked agitated and was pacing back and forth while gesturing with the gun at her side.
Officers tried to negotiate with Wiggins, who said that if she couldn’t speak to her father in federal prison, she would start shooting hostages.
During negotiations, one of the hostages was able to escape when Wiggins asked them to go get her phone from her car. Officers then heard a gunshot and forced their way inside the store, according to court documents.
One of the hostages told police that Wiggins was frustrated when the hostage who escaped ran out and didn’t come back with her phone, and she fired the gun – but not at anyone. However, she did tell one of the hostages to get on the ground as if he’d been hit by a bullet, the complaint states.
Wiggins’ mother told police that her daughter was “unstable” and added that she had been acting strangely since she got back from Tennessee a few months prior.
Court documents also note police had responded to an incident a day earlier involving Wiggins when she said that her father had given her brother a piece of poisoned cake. Medics found no evidence her brother had been poisoned.